


Jeeves and the Puppy

by Petra



Category: Iskryne Series - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Companion Animal, Crossover, Gen, Psychic Wolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tuppy Glossop has a spot of bother with a chap whose wolfbrother has charmed Angela away from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jeeves and the Puppy

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Dira for brainstorming and many of the jokes, and Derry for Britpicking.

It was an absolutely spiffing Saturday, beginning properly late, as no Saturday ought to begin before the weight of Friday has long passed. Like all the best Saturdays, it started round about noon when Jeeves shimmered gently into my chamber carrying a tray bearing the tea of life and the liquid of his concoction that thrust out all toxins and restored life to the most sodden of fibers. I took the blessed liquids into my being, and as I absorbed the latter, then sipped the former with the strength it brought, Spinoza carried in the young master's slippers as well. He presented his muzzle for a bit of late morning or early afternoon affection, and I scratched him behind his grey ears while he grinned at me.

"There was a new song at the Drones last night," I told him, as Jeeves humored my musicality with less enthusiasm than Spinoza, who occasionally sang along in a lupine sort of way. "It was about a wolf who found his brother the best wife in the world."

Spinoza licked my hand. It was the sort of behavior he kept for those domestic moments such as the early morning levee. If he were to venture such an affection in public, Jeeves would cough like a sheep on a distant hill and old Spinners would be right at his side, decorating his impeccable trousers with wolf hair that Jeeves could remove with the force of his formidable brain.

"A song, sir?" Jeeves said.

"Do I detect a note of resignation in your tone, Jeeves?" I asked, and patted the bed next to my elbow. It dipped like a pass betwixt the Alps when Spinoza put his paws on it, but what of that? I had to please my best audience. "I'll sing it for Spinoza, won't I, boy? Yes, yes, of course. And Jeeves can put cotton wool in his ears and hum."

He washed my face for that, and while many would say that having a wolf lick one's cheeks is unsanitary, they haven't met Spinoza. His breath smelled faintly of mint in the mornings through some valet magic, and he was no more unhygienic than your better class of hospital ward.

"There is a message waiting for you, sir," Jeeves said, with a hopeful air, as if I would dare to disappoint his brother by denying him a luncheon serenade.

"Oh?" I said, as carelessly as possible. There were songs to sing, after all. Mere human tragedy could wait.

Jeeves cleared his throat and offered a telegram delicately between his fingers. "It came an hour before you were ready to arise, sir."

If it hadn't been for his restorative, I still shouldn't have been ready to arise. "From some early bird, no doubt," I said. Jeeves let the wordplay pass without comment, and I opened the telegram.

I read it aloud to my enthralled listeners:  
COME AT ONCE BERTIE STOP BRING JEEVES AND SPINOZA STOP FUTURE IS ON THE LINE STOP HELP HELP HELP TUPPY STOP

"Do you suppose that's, 'Help Tuppy,' or 'Help, Tuppy'?" I asked.

"The punctuation would not change the meaning in this instance, sir, unless it were from your cousin Angela and more on the order of, 'Help! Help! Tuppy!'" Jeeves gave a sort of kick to the words that got the Wooster spirit flowing.

I swung my legs out of bed with the alacrity of a preux chevalier dashing to the rescue of a fair maiden, his wolf running fleetly at the side of his noble steed. Except that my foot had got rather entangled in the bedclothes, tugging the sheet off, and the wolf that bounced back from the bed to clear my way was not in any sense mine. "Then we must go," I said, and go we did.

Not four hours later we were en route to Brinkley Court where the Travers clan dwelt in pastoral splendor, accompanied on occasion by the Glossop of our mutual acquaintance. I would not have biffed off to the country with such speed, except that I knew my Aunt Agatha was due back in town any day from a lengthy but not lengthy enough tour of Greek Islands. While I have nothing against the Greeks as a people, I wished heartily that they had enthralled her enough to keep her in some Mediterranean bay. It was not to be, and she had written me no less than three times during her voyage regarding my lack of prospects both marital and lupine. Brinkley Court was free of both Aunt Agatha's sort of girl and rooms full of wolf puppies with their mother's brother reciting their lineage back to the last royal wolf, whether that was one generation or ten.

The pride of the Woosters insisted that I must bond with a wolf at some point, just as I should find the fairest flower of womanhood and have her to wife, but not yet. Not while either a dearest cousin or an old school chum cried, "Help, help!" at a telegram.

Tuppy came running up the drive to meet the motor as we pulled in. "What ho, Tuppy!" said I.

"Where have you been?" he cried, looking wounded and a tad rounder than normal. Anatole's cooking had that effect on the bird, and on anyone else lucky enough to inhabit Brinkley Court and unlucky enough to have the habit of eating as much as possible. The last time we'd visited, Jeeves had had to have a stern word with Anatole regarding the serving sizes of steak tartare he prepared for Spinoza, lest we have trouble returning to the city without acquiring a heavier class of vehicle.

"I've been in London," I said.

Tuppy scoffed. "Of course you were," he said, as though he hadn't asked the foolish question in the first place. "What took you so long?"

"Not all of us are 'As fleet as midnight, soaring o'er the dells / And light as foam upon the ocean swells,' eh, what?" I said, and Spinoza gave me a grin for it. He loved The Song of Arthur and Cafall nearly as much as I had when I committed it to memory as a boy. "If you want a real conversation, Tuppy old man, you've got to wait for the humans to straggle in."

"Right," he said, and gave Spinoza a wary, respectful look. He wasn't as green around the gills in the wolfish presence as his uncle Roderick, and he recalled the incident at Gretna Green wherein Spinoza extricated him from a most injurious moment well enough to pay his respects to the furry chap as much as to Jeeves and his towering fish-powered intellect, but Tuppy was never easy around our four-legged heroes.

"What's amiss?" I asked, when he hesitated. There was no other way to get the tale out of the blighter.

Some fellows thought a wolf could pluck the thoughts clean out of their heads, but I knew better than that. In the first place, Spinoza had better things to do than chase the two or three sparks of brain in the noggin of a chap like Tuppy, and in the second, that's simply not how the wolf-bond works. They might pick up a thought tossed at them with sufficient force as one might catch a police constable's helmet should it be chucked in one's direction, but they don't go poking about like a houseguest rifling a chest of drawers.

Particularly not in the mind of one so averse to them as Tuppy. Now, I shouldn't have minded having Spinners sniff about my mind if he was inclined, but we had an understanding. He stayed off the good furniture, licked my face, and called me _young wolf_ , or so Jeeves assured me. In return, I made sure he got the best cuts of meat, gave him a good scratch behind the ears, and defended his honor in the matter of the neighbor's cats.

"It's that blasted Angela again," Tuppy said, going squishy about the face. He'd been in the vicinity of Anatole's table far too long, and it was affecting his complexion as well as his silhouette, poor fish. "She says she's in love with this dashed fool named Cheshire. Have you ever heard of him?"

I searched my mind and went through all the members of the Drones Club. "Can't say that I know a Cheshire, no."

"Would that be Nicholas Cheshire-Cheddar, sir?" Jeeves asked, with that smoothness of tone that never implied an insult to Bertram's memory, merely helped to make up its lack. "Heir to the lesser Cheshire estates?"

"Oh, Cheesy!" I said, clapping my hands. "Everyone knows Cheesy."

"Well, I didn't," Tuppy said, looking put out. "And I wish I'd never heard of him, either. He has a wolf, you know."

That put rather a new spin on things. Tuppy wasn't born to a wolf, wasn't likely to achieve a wolf, and certainly wasn't going to have one thrust upon him, unlike yours truly. "Ah," I said, and frowned at Spinoza. "Angela's fond of them."

"Have you ever met a woman who wasn't fond of the idea of a wolf? 'All true Englishmen' this and 'If you served your monarch properly' that, all while that Cheesy's sitting there with a puppy on his lap that couldn't go two rounds with the local tomcat." Tuppy gave Spinoza an apologetic look as soon as he'd said the words. "I'm sure he'll get better with age."

"Indubitably," I said, and Spinoza nosed my hand.

Tuppy sighed. "I don't suppose you recall any stories about him. The name's not due to an unpleasant odor?"

"No."

"No embarrassing personal problems?" Tuppy sighed. "No shieldbrothers clinging to his tails?"

"Not that I've ever heard."

Jeeves glanced at Spinoza for one of those long moments that reminded a chap that there were things in heaven and earth he should not wot of. It used to send a shiver down my spine, seeing them chat like that. But Jeeves always came up with the cream of his plans after a communication with Spinners, and I wasn't about to interfere with his genius in any way. "It seems to me, sir, that you would be best served by reminding Miss Travers of the difficulties of sharing a home with one who is bonded to a lupine companion."

"What difficulties?" I asked, while Tuppy goggled, his eyes as big as saucers. "You and Spinoza have never given me a moment's trouble. Entirely the reverse, old things, and I'll biff anyone who says different."

"Ah," Jeeves said with the faintest of smiles. "Thank you, sir, but there is a great difference between a mature wolf who understands the social niceties required to cohabitate in a small city apartment and one who is youthfully exuberant and accustomed to rural life. Should Miss Travers find the latter where she expects the former, I doubt her affections for Mr Cheshire-Cheddar would persist in the face of disillusionment."

I tried to unravel this for Tuppy, who sometimes found Jeeves' manner of speech a trifle difficult to comprehend, particularly when he overtaxed his system with the finer sort of French cuisine. "Puppies will be puppies," I said.

"Huh," Tuppy said. "Aren't wolf puppies better behaved than dogs?"

"Often, but not universally, sir," Jeeves said.

"Huh," I said, and thanked my luck again for pulling me to the country, far from any drawing rooms full of potentially disastrous pups.

Cheesy's puppy, a stout little fellow named Congleton's Pride or Congo, for short, was a dark brown. He was in the leggy stage all young things go through, and he chased after Spinoza's stately grey form with verve.

Angela laughed at his antics the first day we were there, though he interrupted a croquet match and bungled Cheesy's wickets enough that he had to be extracted with some care and taken to the local veterinary to have a paw looked at. He was pronounced hale and hearty, and not twenty-four hours later he found his way into the Travers boudoir.

I shouldn't like to speculate upon the relative dexterity of wolves, as I have seen Spinoza execute the sort of tricks that would stand your hair on end with only the bluntest of paws, but one way or another, little Congo worked his way into the armoire as well.

We were all sitting down to a delicate meal beginning with a fine turtle soup, one of Anatole's choice offerings, when Angela stood up from the table and shrieked. "What is that thing doing?" She pointed at the doorway.

It would have been ungentlemanly to leave her to face whatever lurked there, and the table swiveled as one. One of young Angela's lacier possessions was skittering across the floor, borne on the head and shoulders of Congo, whose tongue protruded in the most joyful manner.

Aunt Dahlia stood up with alacrity, as did Angela, diving for the puppy to prevent any more masculine eyes from examining his headpiece. "Wretched thing!" Aunt Dahlia said in the voice she used for riding with the hounds. "We'll have it off him in a moment, Angela."

"I say, what a clever little chap he is," said Cheesy, with the befuddled fondness of a father whose infant has learned how to vomit on someone else's shoulder for a change. "Fancy him finding that."

"Get it off him at once!" Angela commanded, her tones every bit as ringing as the maternal trumpeting, but Cheesy did not cast, nor did he bell.

"I think it's rather adorable," he said. "Do you think he'd open the doors again if we set him in front of them?"

Congo wagged his tail, shaking a bit of lace, and dashed away from Aunt Dahlia, who pursued him with face as red as fox-hunting garb. "After him, Tom!" she shouted, though the avuncular portion of the party was tucking into his turtle with every sign of pretending nothing was happening.

Angela gave Cheesy a fell look, waxing wroth, if that's the word I want, and said, "That beast will never open my doors again, and neither will you. Get out immediately, or I'll have my father call the constabulary."

Her father chose that moment to make an undignified slurping noise with his turtle broth. "Quite right," he said, dabbing at his lips with a napkin. "We'll have no thieving dogs in this house."

"Congleton's Pride is a wolf," said Cheesy, his voice as cold as Aunt Dahlia's was hot, and began to recite the puppy's pedigree, as if anyone was listening.

He got as far as, "Daughter of Thou-Shalt-Serve-Him-Well out of Fear-Not by Ye-Shall-Be-Saved-By-His-Fangs," before Angela's crescendoing shouts of, "Get out, get out, get out!" drowned him out entirely and summoned the whole of the belowstairs staff to see Mr Cheshire-Cheddar to the door, bundling his belongings and his puppy along with him. Someone had removed the puppy's new collar before they chased Congo out the door.

"Well," Tuppy said, when everyone had returned to the table and the cooling soup was spread before us. "Sometimes it's truly a relief to know I shall never have to share my life with a wolf."

"Oh, Hildebrand," Angela said, and the love-light was back in her eyes. It shone less brightly than the adoration of Tuppy's for the roast lamb that followed the soup, but the bliss of Anatole's cooking was momentary. They took a post-prandial stroll in the garden and looked quite reunited when I spied them through my window.

"A job well done, Jeeves," I said, and tipped him well. Tuppy, while complimentary, was a bit short of the filthy lucre, and it didn't do to leave one's man hanging after such quick work. "But how could a puppy have opened a wardrobe? The doors are heavy."

Jeeves raised his eyebrows at me as if to say that if I eschewed all light reading and constrained myself to the sort of literature he favored, I would soon fill my brain with all the wisdom he had, and thereby understand the universe. It seemed impossible, as his brain was considerably larger than mine, and all of his knowledge would surely overstuff my skull. "Never underestimate the ingenuity of a wolf, sir," he said.

"I'll keep that in mind," I said. "And where has old Spinners got to?"

No sooner had I said his name than he came out of the bath, a full hot water bottle held most delicately in his jaws. He had the trick of carrying the Times without smudging it, too. I fell to my knees beside him and said, "There you are, old sport. Ingenuity, indeed, Jeeves." I took the bottle carefully and examined it; it was intact. "Just right for warming up the bed. You are brilliant, both of you. As soon as I have my hands on a piano, Spinoza, I shall sing you the finest song I know."


End file.
